


A Gospel Camp Conspiracy to Avert Juvenile Magical Heroism

by Morbane



Category: The Replacement - Brenna Yovanoff
Genre: Constructive Criticism Welcome, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Loyalty, POV First Person, Protectiveness, mentions of violence (canon)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:31:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After twice seven years had passed, Mackie was forced to confront his origins.</p><p>But here, seven years have passed just once, Emma has plans, and Roswell is puzzled when the Doyles sweep him along on an out-of-state trip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Gospel Camp Conspiracy to Avert Juvenile Magical Heroism

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serenade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serenade/gifts).



Many thanks to my betas, sinngrace and ShadedTopaz.

 

The phone rang late on a school night. My dad was on the phone for a long time, enough that 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' began and ended, and I finished a first toothbrush robot and made a second one to race against the first.

I went down to the kitchen to put away the glue, and Dad put the phone down.

"Roswell," he said, "that was the Doyles."

"Yeah?"

"Reverend Doyle's taking the whole family to some youth music meet-up, making a trip of it. They wondered if you wanted to go."

"Sure, Dad."

"It's in three weeks."

"Uh, okay."

That was a little weird. It was the end of September; the trip would be in late October. We'd have to miss school. You'd think they would have mentioned it before.

"The Reverend will talk to the school for you. Apparently it's a church network event."

"I guess that's okay, then," l said. I smiled at my dad, put the glue away, and went back upstairs.

My answer to anything involving the Doyles was 'Sure'. Part of that was because they were weird. Interesting weird. Mackie was a scrawny little blond kid. He was quiet most of the time, except every now and then he'd come out with some truly odd behavior. He could hear things no one else could. Some sounds seemed to make him twitch, or hypnotize him, when to anyone else they were just sounds.

Emma, who was eleven - not quite three years older than Mackie and me - seemed like an ordinary kind of big sister, except that she seemed to _get_ Mackie's weirdness. Which would make her weird too, except that there was something so normal and sensible about Emma that she made everything around her seem normal.

Between Mackie making everything a little extraordinary and Emma making everything super-ordinary, hanging out with them together could do your head in if you just paid attention.

* * *

Mackie and Emma's mother was a nurse, and earlier in the year, during summer break, she'd done some cover shifts at the hospital at Lydgate, which was a larger town about an hour's drive away.

Lydgate, unlike Gentry, had a huge mall and a cinema, so Emma leaned on Mrs Doyle to drive us kids out there at the beginning of her day shift, and collect us at the end. Her mom had plenty of objections - we'd be alone for eight hours, we'd be eating junk food for lunch and dinner because her shift ended in the middle of the evening, what if we got separated? I helped by pointing out that I had a cousin who worked in one of the mall stores. We could check in with him.

And so on. Mrs Doyle eventually gave in. People trust Emma.

So the day we were all supposed to go out there, Dad dropped me off at the Doyles' house at nine-thirty in the morning.

At ten to ten, which was when we were supposed to be leaving, there was still no Mackie. Mackie was getting pocket money walking Mr Gerrald's Lab cross that summer. But Mr Gerrald's house was only three blocks away from Concord Street, and there was no reason Mackie should have been late.

Mrs Doyle paced through the house. She jerked her fingers through her hair, messed it up, muttered under her breath, and ducked into the bathroom to tidy it up for work again.

Emma was totally calm. "Mom, I think we should go looking for him."

We found Mackie in the paddock behind Downs Road, except I would have expected he'd be on the rope swing, having lost track of time - Mackie never wore a watch, and they stopped if he did. Instead, he was crouched by the edge of the stream that ran down the near side of the field.

Emma was out of the car in a flash, while Mrs Doyle tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and frowned into the mirror.

Mackie was staggering. Emma had to help him across the stream. They walked back to the road together, Emma holding up her brother, and she brought him to Mrs Doyle's window.

"Mom," said Emma, "I think we should just walk home by ourselves. We'll take it slow."

If Mackie was sick, I would have expected we'd at least get a lift home, but this was Emma, so the suggestion that Mrs Doyle drive off and leave us there came out as serious and practical.

Mrs Doyle nodded, and Mackie and Emma and I walked back to the Doyles' house. Mackie seemed to get better as we walked, but he was still pale, and his eyes were huge and dark, which was how they went when he was really spaced out.

"You sit down and have a glass of water," Emma said, "and Roswell and I will go and get some videos and popcorn. Okay? After you drink the water, give Dad a call at the church and tell him we're home today."

Mackie curled up on the couch, making it cute, like a puppy or a kitten. You looked at him and you forgave him and then you wondered what it was you were forgiving. "I'm sorry," he said.

"What did you do to yourself?" I said. I'd been dying to ask him all the way back.

"I don't know," said Mackie.

"If it wasn't _running water_ ," Emma snapped at him, "it might be the run-off from the slag _in_ the running water."

"Running _water_?" I said.

And you could _see_ Emma putting her extra-serious face on, tilting her chin slightly up, starting to shrug, as she said, "Some people can't cross running water. I read about it."

"People?" said Mackie.

" _Yeah_ ," Emma said.

And that was the end of that. Emma and I got movies and snacks, and brought them back to Mackie, who had made us a blanket fort to watch the movies in. We watched _Young Frankenstein_ and _Men in Black_ and _Labyrinth_ , and ate candied popcorn in the blanket fort. Outside, the sticky weather turned into thunder and rain. It was a pretty good day.

Emma hated _Labyrinth_. She wouldn't say why.

* * *

The youth-meet-up-church-thing turned out to be a sort of youth choir camp. The choirs were all part of the same church network as Mackie's dad. Our church didn't have a kids' choir, but my dad said the Doyles were going to talk with the other church leaders and we could join in the activities for the kids. As a trip, it sounded a bit average. As a bonus break from school, it sounded pretty all right.

It took us four hours to drive out to the camp, which was actually a Scout Hall in the middle of a state park. Mackie asked for music, but after no one could agree on the station, Reverend Doyle put an audio book into the CD player. It was something by Dickens, read out in a smooth British voice, and it put Emma and me completely to sleep. Which might have been the point.

Mackie was trembling. I was drifting in and out of a doze, and then he shifted, and I suddenly came awake to realise he'd been trembling for a while. I must have been asleep for at least two hours. We'd been on the interstate and we'd turned off at some point, onto a tree-lined, winding road. Still fields and fences though, so I guessed we still had miles to go.

"Are you okay?" I said. I could hear him breathing, shallow and quick, like a panicked rabbit.

Emma peered around me. "Mackie?"

I sat up properly. Mackie was white and his eyes were black. Add a crisis, get Snow White. "I think... it's the car..." he muttered.

"Malcolm, what was that?" said Reverend Doyle.

"We should pull over, Mackie's feeling sick," said Emma.

Mrs Doyle sighed and pointed ahead to a group of trees.

Mackie spilled out of the car when we stopped, almost crawling to the grass beyond the road. "Why didn't you say something?" the Reverend said.

"Well, we're nearly there, right?" said Mackie, muffled, because his face was planted in the grass as though he were trying to breathe it. He didn't throw up, or make those sounds you make when you're going to. He just rubbed his hands across the grass as though he were trying to scrub something off them.

So we waited a while. Emma read a book, I skimmed stones across the road and watched Mackie, and his parents stood a little way off, talking. Finally Mackie sat up and smiled tentatively at me. "Okay, off we go again," said Reverend Doyle.

I'd got so used to Mackie's weirdness that some of the little things just slid past me some of the time. But even if I'd been used to the ways his eyes changed, I would have been freaked out when he got back into the car. His skin was pale anyway - it flushed near-white again. His eyes had gone back to brown - they went nearly black, the whole iris.

"Oh," he said.

"I know," said Emma, and she got out, ran to the trees, and scooped up huge handfuls of early fallen leaves.

" _Emma!_ " said Mrs Doyle.

But she ran back, and poured her armful all over Mackie. Leaves went down his shirt and under the seat. He breathed in the earthy smell and smiled. "It works!"

"What are we going to look like, driving down the road with a boy covered in mulch?" said Mrs Doyle.

"Mom," said Emma, "it doesn't matter. We're not in Gentry any more." She grinned fiercely, and Mackie was grinning, and I started grinning because it was contagious, even though I had no idea why they were suddenly all elated.

* * *

I was right about the _average_ part of the trip. Mackie's dad had said we'd be helping set the camp up for the choirs, but I hadn't realised we'd spend so much time cleaning. Mackie and Emma swept out the bunk rooms and shook out the bedding. Reverend Doyle mowed the field out behind the main buildings. Mrs Doyle got me sweeping out leaves that had been blown into the shower block. _And so on_.

We finally got a break when Mackie's parents started making dinner. I'd barely seen Mackie all day, but he was completely hyper. He bounced up with a Swiss ball, super pleased with himself for having just pumped it up to full. He threw it as hard as he could at Emma, missed, tripped, stubbed his toe on concrete, bounced back up, and went running after the ball.

"Why are you so happy?"

"We're miles away from anywhere! There's trees and no iron and no people staring, it's just us, hooooooooraaaahhhh!"

 _Iron?_ Whatever. "Dude," I said, "I had no idea you were such a hippy."

I don't think he even knew what I meant, but he just collapsed on the grass and laughed, laughed so much that I started laughing. Then even Emma did. She had been twenty feet away, reading a book by the shower block light, and she came over to sprawl on the grass beside us and laugh too.

Mackie was even excited about concrete shower blocks.

Mackie's parents said we could sleep in a bunkhouse by ourselves, until the choirs arrived, and Mackie made Emma tell us story after story after story, both nights. Mostly fairy tales. Then I told stories about people I thought were cool, presidents and baseball players and guitar players, because come on, fairy tales? It was nearly Halloween, we should have been telling ghost stories. But the other two weren't keen.

The next day was Saturday, and the choir groups started arriving. It was a bit awkward because they all knew each other, and we didn't know anyone, but only at first. When they weren't in singing practice, they were doing hiking or sports, and their activities were pretty easy to crash.

Most of them were older than us, in junior high at least, which was okay for Emma. I spent the first day telling church group A that Emma and Mackie and I were from church group B, and so on, until someone got actually worried that we'd been left behind on a walk, and Emma had to get her dad to sort it out.

Each night had a concert. The music kind of bored me. I'd never listen to gospel or soul on my own, and that was pretty much all they were doing. But I couldn't get Mackie to hang out outside the hall with me. He was hung on the music as if the choirs had him on invisible strings. "No way," he said, when I tried to get him to come out and kick the Swiss ball around in the field.

"Come on, groupie, there are fireflies and everything."

"No."

I got pretty bored kicking a ball around by myself, and came back to get Mackie when the singing stopped.

There was a bunch of kids sitting around him. Someone had given him a ukelele, and he was plinking out something that sounded like a speeded-up nursery rhyme.

Except it was so happy. He played it over and over again, played something like a bridge, and went back to the same tune, and it should have been the kind of kiddie recital where you wait until it's over and say something nice so you don't hurt the kid's feelings.

But he played a stupid repetitive thing - and in the music was his excitement, all the happiness Mackie felt at being there, not necessarily among those people but in that place. You shouldn't be able to tell that from a ukelele tune.

He stopped, and smiled at everyone around him. They grinned back. Then some of them looked a little confused.

"Mackie!" Emma yelled, coming up behind me. "Mom wants you!"

Some of the kids looked disappointed, but Mackie obediently came. "What does she want?" he asked Emma as they passed me.

"Nothing," said Emma. "She just said she'd back me up on that any time I needed to drag you away."

"So why do _you_ need me?" said Mackie, sulky now. I was trailing them.

"Because you're not supposed to make yourself the center of attention!"

"You said we weren't in Gentry any more," Mackie said. He sounded as though he were about to cry.

"But we're in the middle of people," Emma said. "You did the trick with the watch yesterday, and it's only lucky that you weren't around yesterday when Michael from the North Carolina group had a bloody nose."

I was expecting Mackie to keep arguing but he didn't. He just sighed. "Go find Roswell or something," Emma said, sounding sad and defeated too. So I had to duck around a corner and head back to the field, though I probably looked lame when he found me, kicking a ball in the dark.

I kept wanting to ask Mackie what the deal was, with iron and cars and being outdoors and music and watches, because there were enough _things_ to make a weird picture. But I kept _not_ asking. Because if there were an answer, and he told me, then I'd know it, and I wasn't sure I wanted to look at Mackie and see someone, something, else.

The last night of the choir camp, Tuesday, was also Halloween. If I hadn't been out of state with the Doyles, I would have been at the Corbetts' Halloween party, because Drew and Danny's parents had promised a really cool haunted house. But at least the weather was still dry, so the choir kids were having a massive bonfire while the adults had their own final dinner in the hall. That could be good.

There were sixty or so kids around the fire. The older kids started telling freaky stories, trying to get the younger ones to act scared. I wasn't fazed, but the three boys to the right of me were, and one started loudly complaining that he'd heard the story about the monster in the closet before.

"I've got a story you don't know," I said. "It's the story of Kellan Caury."

I had everyone's attention.

"This is a real story," I said. "It happened in our town seventy years ago. There are still people who remember it."

I spun it out, about the strange man who sold records and tuned violins and had extra joints on his fingers. I talked about how he was always quiet, and polite, the politest man that ever was, even to rude kids.

"But in our town, seventy years ago, no one trusted anyone, not unless they were your family or your pastor. Or maybe not even then. And they had a good reason."

I talked about the missing kids, always babies. I talked about the week leading up to Halloween.

I told them that Kellan loved to play music too. That when he got out his violin, it was magic. "You'd stop what you were doing, and come listen. Kind of like the Pied Piper of Hamelin... only not.

"And then the sheriff's daughter went missing. She was only one year old."

I was loving it. They were hanging on my every word, maybe because it wasn't some old story about witches and monsters, just creepiness.

Then I glanced to my left, where Emma and Mackie were sitting, and got a shock. They weren't hooked on the story. Emma gave me a look that said _I will get you for this_ , and Mackie looked betrayed, and I had no idea why.

I was going to tell the choir kids about the lynching and suddenly I couldn't. It was a grisly story, sure, and I had been _going_ to end it by saying that Kellan wasn't the really creepy thing. The really creepy thing was that some of the people who'd done the lynching might still be alive, in the old folks' home - mob murderers that no one ever pointed any fingers at. How no one ever found the babies. But I couldn't do that either.

"The mayor said that everything that had gone wrong must be because of Kellan," I said. "He called for a group of people to go after him. There was a mob.

"Half of the town gathered around Kellan's place. He lived above his music store. They broke down the door. But he wasn't there," I said. "There was nothing but his instruments. They didn't find any baby clothes. They sure didn't find any bodies."

I paused. "I mean, they found some pretty weird shit," I said. I was trying to be casual and the word came out stupid - someone snorted, but I kept going. "They found all these foreign masks which might have been made out of skin. They found old jars with weird, spiky labels. They found, like, a million bajillion Leonard Cohen records." I'd gotten thrown off the story and that was the first name I'd thought of. No one laughed.

"But the crowd was angry," I said, picking up the pace again. "So the mayor and his men all got out of the building, and they set fire to the place.

"Here's the weird thing," I said.

"When the place caught fire, all the instruments burned. And they made music. Hypnotic, strange music like Kellan played, crackling with the fire. And the mayor, and all of the people who'd set fire to Kellan's things, walked towards the music, and they jumped into the fire."

I stopped.

My audience blinked, expecting more.

"Okay, so what about the kids?" sneered the boy who'd been telling the closet monster story.

"Oh, that," I said. "That was the Dirt Witch."

"Oh riiiigghht."

Emma jumped in, and started trying to tell the Dirt Witch story, but even though she was a better story teller than I was, and the same age as the other kids, it didn't last very long. They were disappointed, bored. She'd barely started describing the Witch when someone else jumped in, "Hey, I've got one," and kept going from there. But she didn't seem to mind.

The adults broke up the party pretty soon after that, and we headed off to our bunks.

"Thanks," Mackie said. He came up to me and gave me a hug, his head under my chin for a moment, reminding me of a dog licking your hand to tell you it loves you. Mackie always reminds me of animals.

"Yeah," Emma muttered, "that's not the way Dad tells it."

* * *

I was a coward. Sometimes I just am. I didn't ask Mackie. I asked Emma.

"So, your brother is a bit strange," I plunged in. All of the choir groups were gone - it was just the Doyles and me tidying up the hall and the camp grounds. In the rain.

Emma raised her eyebrows. "Yeah, I guess," she said.

"I mean, really strange."

"You're his friend," Emma said coolly. "He must not weird you out that much."

Okay. I tried something else.

"Why did you guys come out here?" I said. "Your parents don't seem like they'd pull you out of school just like that."

"Roswell," Emma said, "what are you getting at?"

"Why did you get upset when I started telling the Kellan Caury story?" I tried yet again.

"Mackie doesn't like that story."

"So why does your dad tell it to him?"

Emma sighed and put down the blanket she was folding. "Give it up."

"No. Why did you bring me along if you're just going to pretend around me?"

"People pretend all the time, Roswell. They pretend they like stupid music and movies. They pretend they don't believe in bad luck. Right now I'm _pretending_ that you're not a little brat."

I glared at her. "You _know_ Mackie's weird." I made a connection. "You think he's just as weird as Caury. Come on, Emma! What do you think I'm going to do, throw Mackie off a bridge or something?"

She glared back at me. I was sure she was going to just close the conversation and that would be it. But she didn't.

"It was my idea," she said. "Coming out here."

I waited, scuffling my broom along the floor a bit.

"Every seven years, something bad happens in Gentry," she said. "Just believe me on that. It happened seven years ago."

She paused again.

"Kellan Caury was strange," she said. "Mackie's strange. When bad things happen, people blame the ones who are strange."

"No one would think Mackie _stole children. We're_ just kids."

"Yeah," said Emma, "right now you are. I guess that's not it. I guess...

"Mackie is connected," she said, "to bad things. And sometimes I think everyone knows that, they just want to not know. But one day they might want to know. And Mackie knows."

"But-"

"No, listen, OK? This is the stupid part. I have read so many stories about kids and big bad magical things. Kids. If it's magic then people who aren't ready have to go into battle and sometimes they don't win."

I swallowed. I was completely lost. I hadn't wanted to ask Mackie why he was weird, but I'd asked Emma, and gotten something so much weirder.

"Here's the deal. I wanted to get away from town and I wanted to get Mackie away because whatever happens, even if nothing happens, I don't want to let him get involved. He's _nine_."

I pushed my own broom and it slid to the floor with a clatter, trying to break into her speech.

"Mom and Dad went along with it," she finished. "But it was my idea."

* * *

I spent the last day being one of those people who Didn't Want to Know. Mackie and I played ball and tried to beat each other in guessing the most stupid thing that could have happened that week on TV on any of the shows we watched. I didn't ask Emma for any stories that night. I pretended I went straight to sleep.

For the drive back, Mackie made himself a wreath, and on my suggestion, tied an extra loop to it to hang down and look like sideburns and a beard. There was poison ivy in the wreath. "That didn't sting you," I said. I was learning: I said it just flat, not as a question.

"I guess not," said Mackie.

"It stings most people," I said. Just pointing it out.

Reverend Doyle asked if Mackie wanted to look like a Roman Caesar. I thought he looked like Jesus but I didn't say.

We drove home again. Mackie and I asked for anything rather than books on tape, and Mrs Doyle spun the radio dial to a classical channel. We played all the usual games in the car until we were gamed out and just fell silent.

But the silence wasn't just tiredness. The closer we got to Gentry, the more Reverend and Mrs Doyle sat up straight and tense, and the more they glanced at each other. There was a feeling of dread in the car.

The sign that said _You are entering Gentry_ was posted besides an old lumber yard, and as we glided past its high barbed fence I watched Mackie watching it. He took his wreath off and held it in his hands.

When we got home, I was almost expecting horrible news, but everything was fine. Dad had got Danny Corbett to collect my homework for me. I had a school debate to prepare for. I was a bit tired from the drive, but that was it. My parents joked about how much fun they'd had while I was gone. I told them pretty much the same.

But it made me kind of not surprised when the Donhausers' baby went missing a month later. They never found it. There was a weird, dark rumour, which came to me from Jeremy Sayers, that the Donhausers' baby had been replaced by a shape-shifting monster, and when they'd found out, they'd killed it. But no one would ever know, because by the time it had died, it didn't look like a baby any more.

Nothing really changed with me and Emma and Mackie. Mackie was still the person I hung out with the most. He wasn't often as happy as he'd been out at the camp, but when he was, it was so bright and amazing that I started to look out for it. When I made him laugh, it was worth it.

There is a lot you can pretend away. I pretended away what Emma had said, that bad things happened every seven years. That seven years after our gospel camping trip, something terrible would happen again. I pretended away her certainty that Mackie would be right in the middle of it.

And I knew, but I never really let myself think, that if Mackie was in the middle of trouble, I would be in the middle with him too.

**Author's Note:**

> Note about the ages - for the book's main events, Mackie is sixteen and Emma is 'nearly-twenty'; but the "replacement" occurs fourteen years before this, and at that point, Emma is described as four years old. I couldn't quite resolve this, sorry, so have put them at nine and nearly-twelve for the fic's purposes.
> 
> I totally agree with you, Intended Recipient, that the canon supports Roswell/Mackie slash far better than it does Mackie's het relationships. Another fic, another time?


End file.
